Obama, where art thou?

“Recent studies show that Tibetans actually possess a gene that keeps their blood flowing at high altitudes, so that they don’t have mountain sickness. They’ve tracked this change in their genetic structure to as recently as three thousand years ago. So this is a very recent example of evolution in people.

Is this what happened to President Obama when he rose to the greatest height?

Could his ‘change’ gene have evolved to the ‘not so much change’ gene? Are we seeing somebody who also has a recent evolution?

Well, on the war in Afghanistan, the presumed ‘anti-war’ Obama became the ‘thirty-thousand more troops’ Obama. Put a little camouflage in Obama’s face…

On jobs, on the stimulus bill, the previous ‘stimulus advocate’ Obama, who faced Mitch McConnell finally and a vocal conservative movement — he didn’t campaign consistently for the stimulus that he mentioned in the State of the Union, wound up advocating for that along with deficit reduction, making him at least partly like McConnell.

On financial reform, lobbyists work for mouths to water down the industry reforming legislation. The ‘tough on Wall Street’ Obama becomes the man with liquid assets.

Or it might not be a cloud that we see but maybe smoke arising from some vast power machine, a mechanical Washington-Wall-Street-K-Street monster…

Is what happened at that great height? A natural political evolution? Or is it possible he was never the man we thought he was in the first place?

Comments

Murray

Awesome!

Patriot

With all due respect, I am very frustrated by people turning their backs on Obama like this. He can’t do everything alone. We can’t expect him to wave a magic wand and single-handedly make an entrenched establishment change overnight. He needs Congress and he needs us or he won’t get much done.

I think you may not have listened to candidate Obama during the campaign or known his voting record as a US senator. If you did, you probably would not be surprised by the President Obama we now have.

He campaigned that he would leave Iraq “responsibly” and bring the fight to the Taliban like never before. If you’re surprised by his escalation of the Afghanistan campaign, it’s not because Obama changed his position or kept his intentions secret. We elected a candidate who said he was going to do just that.

He’s made health care reform, wall street reform, the stimulus, and a jobs bill big agenda items. You don’t have to give him credit for that, but I do. How those projects turned out is something he had limited control over, and he had to work pretty damn hard to even get health reform through at all. He’s also done a lot of very positive things that have gone under the media radar.

As a US senator, Obama voted against the authorization of force in Iraq, but voted in favor of giving telecom companies retroactive immunity from prosecution for allowing warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. That mix right there told me a lot about the candidate I was voting for, which is another reason President Obama has not surprised me much.

I’m not sure what kind of change you were expecting, but it sounds like you had unrealistic expectations and were not familiar with Obama before he became president. He’s an effective moderate pragmatist, not a liberal, and not a radical.

I’m sorry you feel the change is not enough for you, but I see significant change, and again, no president could flip a switch and magically change the deeply entrenched establishment overnight.

*Insert obligatory (though relevant and factually true) statement about him entering the presidency during a time of crisis and handling that fairly well over all while managing to push through several big agenda items in less than two years.*

Richard

Let’s look at some specific campaign promises of Obama’s:

-To broadcast the health care negotiations on CSPAN. Didn’t happen. Was entirely in his power to do so.

-To allow for imported prescription drugs. Didn’t happen. Was entirely in his power to do so.

-Make all Federal contracts above $25,000 subject to bidding process. Agree with the idea or not, he could’ve done it in a day and hasn’t.

-Abolish income tax on seniors earning under $50k didn’t happen.

-The famous “Sunlight before signing” pledge, promising to give citizens time to read all bills before signing them into law.

We can make apologies for the President. He’s come into office at a tough time. Many people voted for him based on promises of a new transparency in government -those are the promises he has vehemently turned his back on.

Patriot Supporter

Obama is the greatest president America had during our times. He is genuine, smart and does what he says to the best of his ability, he has no control over the 40 Republicans who want to stop all of his plans, just because they fear that it will be end of their philosophy. People generally like to listen to all juicy non-sense coming out of media and also from the failed political philosophy. They forget things fast. That is Why they hate goverment not understanding from where all the good things have come to them. It is so sad the crooks who created all the troubles and the same philosophy will take it over and ruin the economy again.

Maggie Muggins

I am tired of American’s finding fault with our President. Maybe a few of the complainers need to walk in his shoes. We have become a giant shouting match. We need to ASK for reform on the state level e.g. such as an amendment to the Constitution requiring the state’s pay the salary of its Congressional members. They should be required to report back to the state represented on a quarterly basis regarding the progress on the issues at hand. If we don’t like what he or she is doing—-recall and re-elect another willing to provide for the common welfare. They work for the the states not the federal government. No More PORK BARRELS or I’LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK IF YOU SCRATCH MINE. All lobbying should be done on the state level in that legislative branch and televised. Lobbyist should be barred from employment for a period of five years due to conflict of interest. States that collect income taxes should publish the amount of money collected from the individual states. We would then have a working knowlege of the general public’s contribution. Congressional Members need to publish their income taxes. Corporations should have the amount of tax dollars contributed published too. If everyone is above-board none of this should be a problem. We can do something besides complain. We might consider term limits for all Congressional Members. Serious consideration should be given to the kind of advertising on television. Perscription drugs with a list of symptons make it pretty easy on doctors and/or people to solict certain medications. Read Maggie Mahar’s “Money and Medicine.” We can help the President with reform. These suggestions would bring about a vast amount of transparency. America ” Where Art Thou.”

Colin

I’m totally with ‘patriot’ on this. I heard a joke the other day that mentioned how white people builthuge expectations for obama that they knew he wouldn’t live up to. Funny satirical,but the kernel of truth there is something we need to look at. The man always said he’s the type of leader that will listen and make compromises to get things done. I am only 27 years old, so I don’t have along history here, but he has accomplished more and been the best president I have lived to see so far.

I. Flux

Fair and balanced? Guess I missed the episode on the Downing Street memo. Maybe you guys should look into how that dude saved us from the second Great Depression. Hope you are not replacing Moyers with wussie journalism.

Anti Warrior

Er… um… I decided NOT to vote for Obama precisely at the moment he promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Next time, pay attention.

Sydney

The problem isn’t Obama as much as it is the constant coverage. Candidates are obviously pandering to the widest audience possible and fear that supporters will pull out the moment they see something they don’t totally agree with. Neither McCain nor Obama could have possibly met all their promises. I’m not saying that there’s an easy solution of making candidates and presidents less accountable but the more that every move is analyzed and put into a little box, the more difficult it is to have a truly straightforward candidate. Change would be fantastic but it is also unrealistic to the extent that people use bills as ways to attack before they really understand the full weight of the issue. And money–most sadly–does carry a lot of weight.

I’m not sure if Obama is the man he was while campaigning but I think even if he truly believed what he was saying then–I suspect most folks would have trouble accomplishing it all in the time available with the political and media pressures. In other words, I wonder how frequently a president is the same person they were when they were campaigning.

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